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The Assignment
You realized you were dreaming at some point while you were being led down a corridor by some men. As dreams tend to go, you didn't recall when it had started or what the context was. You followed them, silently accepting whatever plans they had for you, the faint knowledge that it was a dream not making it any easier to break engagement with the plot. As the dream went on, you realized you were in a school hallway. You didn't recognize the specific school, but it held a sense of familiarity common to K-12 institutions. You felt a strange sense of belonging mixed with dread. You wanted to go home, well, to wake up, but something told you that you must go through with whatever was ahead. You started to see other people, teachers or staffers, and realized you had entered an administrative wing. The men took you to computer lab/conference room/testing center/something and sat you down at a table, handing you a packet of pages. You asked what you were supposed to do. They just told you to "start taking the test." The packet was recognizable as a school exam of some kind, but since sleep blocks the part of the brain used to perform logic-based tasks such as reading a book or using a computer, such activities are extremely difficult to do in a dream, and the more you tried to concentrate on the assignment before you, the more incomprehensible it became. At this point the dream was fast wearing out its welcome. "Why do I have to take a test? I haven't been in school for years. I'm an adult now," you protested to the man who had handed the test to you. His response puzzled you even more. "You know that personality test your class took when you were in 6th grade? Well, there were some...discrepancies, in your results, so you're going to take it again. Well,it's not the same test exactly, more of a followup deal just to get a proper baseline." Now you were getting really annoyed. "Excuse me, but I graduated middle school well over a decade ago. This is stupid. I don't know what personality test you mean, but I'm going home now." You couldn't quite perceive the man's face clearly, but could tell he was unfazed by your response. "Alright, if you want to try to leave, there's the door. But you'll be back." So you walked out, wandering the halls until you found an exit. You couldn't tell if was supposed to be day or night outside, but you didn't care. You walked the parking lot aimlessly until it faded to black. You didn't know if seconds or hours had passed, but before you knew it you were in the hallway again, once again following the men. Again, you made no effort disengage the dream and followed them right back into the testing room, where the same man sat you down and handed you the packet. "Here's the deal: you don't get to wake up until you take this. We can keep you here as long as we have to. Come on, it's not that difficult. This data is very important to us, and sometimes we have to do followup exams. Just do it and it'll be over in no time and you can go back to dreaming about whatever it was you were dreaming about before." So you started taking the test. It was grueling. You had no conscious clue what you were doing. The test consisted of a bunch of bizarre puzzles and logic problems that had no clear purpose or interpretation. All you really knew was that they were hard, and there were a lot of them. You mindlessly completed them, wanting only to finish the test so you could leave. But there were so many problems. It just went on and on, for what seemed like hours. After what must have been the thousandth problem, you decided to leave again. It was just a dream, and your alarm had to go off some time. Once again, the man made no attempt to stop you as you left the room, walked through the administrative wing, and entered the school halls. You woke up in your bed. The lights were off. You turned on the lamp on your nightstand and got out of bed to get a drink of water. As you journeyed down the bathroom hall to the kitchen, you grew uneasy. The unease turned to fear, then terror. The bathroom hall started to shrink, and a large monster took over your dream. It was a being from your childhood nightmares, only more terrifying that it had ever been. It grew larger and more terrifying, and just as it was about to consume you, you found yourself sitting at the table again, looking down at the test. "I wouldn't advise doing that again," the man said plainly. "If need be, we can make you restart the test from the beginning. You don't want that, do you?" You sighed, and resumed the assignment. It was grueling as ever. You spent what felt like another two hours on it. Along the way, you noticed that someone else was in the room taking it as well. You didn't know how long he had been there. He turned to face you. You couldn't make out his face, but he had blonde hair. "Can you believe they're making us take this thing again?" he said. "I mean 6th grade was years ago, right? Oh what am I doing, talking to the people in my dreams as if that'll help. Crazy, right?" The two of you turned back to your assignment. You completed hundreds of more problems, over what seemed like four more hours, before finally finishing. Exhausted and exasperated, you angrily handed the packet back to the man. He looked over it, nodded, said something else, then said "alright, looks good. You're free to go." You woke up in your own bed, covered in sweat. This time it was for real, not another false awakening. You sat up. A wave of relief washed over you. There's no feeling in the world like finally waking up from a particularly intense dream, one you didn't even realize the intensity of until you woke up. You got up, used the bathroom, wiped the sweat off with a wet rag, then made yourself some soup. You looked at the clock and realized that it had only been an hour since you went to bed. Funny how dreams always seem longer than they actually are. While you were eating, you thought back over your dream, and something hit you: you did take a strange personality test back in 6th grade, which you'd long since forgotten about until now. It had little in common with the Myers-Briggs test or any of the other personality tests or career-interest surveys you ever took in school. The one you took in 6th grade was administered by a group of men in suits from some foundation or non-profit you didn't recall the name of. It involved strange questions, such as ones that had you stare at abstract shapes for a certain amount of time and have you check the box for which object it reminded you most of, as well as several questions that asked about your dreams. You actually didn't finish that test in time. You were one of two students who didn't. And come to think of it, the other one did have blonde hair. Man, dreams sure have a way of messing with your mind, don't they? You laughed, and sat down to watch some TV. You didn't have work the next day, so you'd spend a couple hours doing that. One detail of the dream kept nagging at you, though. You knew it was just a dream, but you couldn't put it out of your mind. While you had been making your soup, you had suddenly remembered what the man administering the test in your dream had said before saying you were free to go. "We'll process these results, and then depending on how they turn out, maybe touch base with you again in ten years."